Posts
Where in the World is D?
Saying Hello, Ni Hao, Whazz Up and other random thoughts.
I love to write. I write both as a form of expression and as therapy. But good writing takes time and is a discipline. I sometimes have the time, but lack the discipline.
I’m out of practice because of my self imposed silence, at least for good expressive writing. I’ve have written for therapy over the past months. Much of it has not made it the blog and likely never will. Some things are a bit too personal for such a public place. Yeah, yeah, I know I promised some months back to share openly the good and the bad of my experience. You’ll still the ……. Mmm painful, for lack of a better term at the moment, but the blog just got too sad.
Fact is, while I do have moments of great sadness, loneliness the occasional feeling of regret. I also have moments of fun and laughter too. I want to go back to those quirky observations I made before. They were more fun. Let us begin….
First thing that has been on my mind on a daily basis is the men’s locker room at the gym. Men please, for my sake if not yours, put on a towel!! And definitely put on a towel if you are going to relax in the area with the newspapers. It think it pretty cool the gym offers that area. But not so cool wonder if I sit in this chair, has some dudes naked ass and other parts been hanging out, pardon the expression, in the same chair recently. I don’t care if you just took a shower, it’s just not cool, OK?!
Second, I offer my side of a recent conversation. But one I have more often than you know.
“No, I don’t him.”
“Yes, they are a foreign.”
“Really, I don’t care.”
“No, if he wants to know me, he’ll come over.”
“No I have nothing against him.”
“He is probably like me. If he wanted to be with another foreigner, he would go to a place where a lot foreigners hangout. Not a bar full of Taiwan people.”
Last night at C’est La Vie, I had, what can only, be described as a very awkward greeting between myself and a guy named John. For the record, for all my Taiwan friends, not all foreigners know each other or want to know each other. It’s OK. Really, it is.
John and I are both American. And we were both clearly uncomfortable with this forced meeting. He was white and had a pretty strong urban east coast accent. I am Black and from the Midwest. Odds are the only thing we have in common is English and being a foreigner in Taiwan. Chances are, that we may have indeed spoken to each other during the course of the evening. C’est la Vie is not that big. But it a little like being on the playground in 1st grade and being forced to play with the new kid.
My first instinct was “What the hell is he doing in MY joint?!” Yeah, I said “MY”. I started going to C’est la Vie when the first opened. I got squatters rights! John speaks more Chinese and communication is easier for him, but ME they love. I’m more than a customer their. I’m a friend. A few weeks ago, on Halloween, they let me be a guest bartender. It really forced my Chinese in a different way. It was fun. So I think it’s fair to say C’est la Vie is MY place.
That'll do it for now.
Good Luck
戴格智
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Bang, Crash, BOOM!
Where in the World is D Today?
Standing on the corner with his mouth wide open.
Given my latest propensity for silence these days, it would take something extraordinary to persuade me to write. Extraordinary indeed!
I am often struck, at the differences in Taiwan culture and my Midwest American culture. In Columbia, MO and American in general, I KNOW what defines as “Normal”. In ANY given situation I can anticipate most outcomes. Of course, there are occasionally exceptions, but human beings by and large are creatures of habit and culture. I would suspect that is true of humans no matter where on the earth they are.
While humans, on one hand, are the same in this relatively simple aspect worldwide, (culture), on the other hand, it (culture)is something that has as many variable and variances as there are people. This leads me to the event today that still leaves me scratching my head in curiosity.
Today on my very routine walk home, crossing the street at the same corner I have crossed at the same time every day I don’t see, but rather hear a crash. But it sounds …… odd. As my foot is reaching the curb I immediately look to my right, there lying in the street is a motor scooter knocked on its side with a woman lying partially under it. She has been hit by a car. I temper my immediate impulse to run out to see if she is ok. My instincts are quelled my two things. One, the traffic does NOT stop… at all. Seriously, NOBODY stops! What the hell?! The second thing that stops me is the policeman in the middle of the street who has been directing traffic. (By the way, isn’t he there to keep this sort of thing from happening?!)
The man driving the car jumps out and runs to the woman crying and holding her leg. Traffic keeps moving at it’s frantic Taiwanese pace. The cop very casually, (really that’s no exaggeration), comes over to the woman leans done to talk to her for a moment. The guy who hits her moves her scooter out of the street and to my utter amazement the traffic cop grabs the woman by the arm and pulls her up to her feet. Or rather her foot. She wobbles and limps over to the side of the street next to her scooter. In witnessing this scene I notice two more things. A car hits the woman’s helmet. I don’t know if she took it off or it got knocked off. Second, as the light changes people begin to cross the intersection in the direction of the accident. 4 people walked past the woman’s shoe, which had been clearly knocked off in the collision and was lying in the intersection. In a twisted combination of frustration, annoyance and compassion, I start to brave the traffic to get the woman’s shoe when the traffic cop comes over and gets it.
As this is happening the car that hit the woman LEAVES!! What?! The cop isn’t even going to write his name and license down?! Then to my utter surprise, the woman collects herself, hops on her scooter and rides away! The traffic cop saunters back to the middle of the intersection and everything continues like “Normal”. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY?!
Is what I saw today normal? I really don’t understand this aspect of Taiwan culture. As for the traffic cop, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as a observer, it seemed it he was not at all concerned about the woman’s well being. Or has he seen this so many times, it’s normal to him and he can assess the woman’s injuries very quickly. Am I simply being an over-sensitive westerner? I am both disturbed and perplexed by today’s event. Mad props to the woman. If I had to go into a battle, I’d want her on my side. If it were me, I would probably still be lying in the fetal position.
As an interesting side note, I am about to buy a motor scooter. So if I have an accident, is my biggest concern going to be, not the car that just hit me, but the possibility of getting hit by another car as it continues on its way without seemingly any regard that I just crashed.
Over the course of my 9+ months in Taiwan, I have found Taiwan people to genuinely kind and compassionate people.
Just don’t have an accident on your motor bike.
Standing on the corner with his mouth wide open.
Given my latest propensity for silence these days, it would take something extraordinary to persuade me to write. Extraordinary indeed!
I am often struck, at the differences in Taiwan culture and my Midwest American culture. In Columbia, MO and American in general, I KNOW what defines as “Normal”. In ANY given situation I can anticipate most outcomes. Of course, there are occasionally exceptions, but human beings by and large are creatures of habit and culture. I would suspect that is true of humans no matter where on the earth they are.
While humans, on one hand, are the same in this relatively simple aspect worldwide, (culture), on the other hand, it (culture)is something that has as many variable and variances as there are people. This leads me to the event today that still leaves me scratching my head in curiosity.
Today on my very routine walk home, crossing the street at the same corner I have crossed at the same time every day I don’t see, but rather hear a crash. But it sounds …… odd. As my foot is reaching the curb I immediately look to my right, there lying in the street is a motor scooter knocked on its side with a woman lying partially under it. She has been hit by a car. I temper my immediate impulse to run out to see if she is ok. My instincts are quelled my two things. One, the traffic does NOT stop… at all. Seriously, NOBODY stops! What the hell?! The second thing that stops me is the policeman in the middle of the street who has been directing traffic. (By the way, isn’t he there to keep this sort of thing from happening?!)
The man driving the car jumps out and runs to the woman crying and holding her leg. Traffic keeps moving at it’s frantic Taiwanese pace. The cop very casually, (really that’s no exaggeration), comes over to the woman leans done to talk to her for a moment. The guy who hits her moves her scooter out of the street and to my utter amazement the traffic cop grabs the woman by the arm and pulls her up to her feet. Or rather her foot. She wobbles and limps over to the side of the street next to her scooter. In witnessing this scene I notice two more things. A car hits the woman’s helmet. I don’t know if she took it off or it got knocked off. Second, as the light changes people begin to cross the intersection in the direction of the accident. 4 people walked past the woman’s shoe, which had been clearly knocked off in the collision and was lying in the intersection. In a twisted combination of frustration, annoyance and compassion, I start to brave the traffic to get the woman’s shoe when the traffic cop comes over and gets it.
As this is happening the car that hit the woman LEAVES!! What?! The cop isn’t even going to write his name and license down?! Then to my utter surprise, the woman collects herself, hops on her scooter and rides away! The traffic cop saunters back to the middle of the intersection and everything continues like “Normal”. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY?!
Is what I saw today normal? I really don’t understand this aspect of Taiwan culture. As for the traffic cop, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as a observer, it seemed it he was not at all concerned about the woman’s well being. Or has he seen this so many times, it’s normal to him and he can assess the woman’s injuries very quickly. Am I simply being an over-sensitive westerner? I am both disturbed and perplexed by today’s event. Mad props to the woman. If I had to go into a battle, I’d want her on my side. If it were me, I would probably still be lying in the fetal position.
As an interesting side note, I am about to buy a motor scooter. So if I have an accident, is my biggest concern going to be, not the car that just hit me, but the possibility of getting hit by another car as it continues on its way without seemingly any regard that I just crashed.
Over the course of my 9+ months in Taiwan, I have found Taiwan people to genuinely kind and compassionate people.
Just don’t have an accident on your motor bike.
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